Written by Kris Galvez
Title: The Long Reach
Developer: Painted Black Games
Publisher: Merge Games
Price: $14.99
Genre: Action, Adventure
Also Available On: Steam, PS4
Horror in video games are hard to get right especially if it's your first time. Whether your game is the jump scare type like Outlast or if it's the psychological type of horror like Silent Hill, almost all of these had already been done in video games. Mastery of the genre is important if you want to set your game apart from others. This is what the developers at Painted Black Games aimed to do in their first video game outing.
The Long Reach is a psychological thriller bordering on the horrors of what the human mind allows you to reach. You play as Stewart or “Stu” as you navigate the hallways of an eerie laboratory where an experiment has gone wrong. The game plays like a normal side scrolling adventure game where you have to come up with a solution to the current “dilemma” or puzzle that your character is currently in. Add in several mad men who comes after you to kill you, a soundtrack that exudes the creepiness of the setting and we should've gotten a decent horror title.
The game tries to give you terror by giving you eerie music as you roam the halls of the laboratory, making you helpless against psychopaths who has large bladed weapons, and even attempts to change your character's perception of reality and what not. All of this are supposed to work well in giving you the dread that a horror game needs. And it succeeds on that. Horror beats are well executed and the way the game psychologically plays with you is nice. The good however ends when you have to move the game forward. Controlling Stu is as cumbersome and slow as the inventory management. The Long Reach is trying to be a Ron Gilbert point and click adventure but it fails at it. Puzzles that are supposed to be logical sometimes need jumps in logic to solve. By the end of it all, I was trying to fight the game's puzzles by just trying to use all items on whatever object I can use them on. This felt like an exercise in futility as I try to click on anything clickable hoping something would work.
It would've been a nicer experience if the narrative is coherent. Unfortunately, the macabre dialogue is loose and distracting. The writing tries to be self aware but falls short on being intelligible. Character motivations sometimes do not make sense which makes them not relatable. Basically, the disconnect between the cool implementation of sanity effects and the sloppy writing pretty much ruins the game's narrative.
With some cool sanity effects and a somewhat good (even if overused) premise, The Long Reach could've been a lot better. Unfortunately, the clumsiness of the puzzle solving and the less than stellar story makes it quite forgettable compared to other horror games for the Switch. It's still a good first try for Painted Black games so I am still excited for what they can do in the future.
Pros
- Great sanity effects which matches the themes of the game.
- Game is 5 hours long so it can be finished in one sitting.
- The creepy soundtrack adds to the overall atmosphere of the game.
Cons:
- Most of the game's 5 hours is trying to solve the puzzles. One clean play through should only take you a couple of hours.
- Despite the theme, the narrative itself falls apart due to shoddy writing and underdeveloped characters.
Score: 6/10
Note: This game was reviewed using a code from the publisher.
No comments:
Post a Comment